The Linden Tree
You didn’t satisfy to us, man from Australia,
in the magnetic field you acted like a she-kale.
Cuba squeezes out the blue snake. We hugged you.
A flash of lightning reports on heaven and spills Fatima.
Remember the asphalt for the million believers.
Remember that on those small gardens, among
ocean ’shrooms and the nation similar
to Slovenians, similarly suppressed, only that
they had three more rags in history (half the world),
murmuring between Tomar and Fatima,
between the ordained fourth miracle and the piece
of cheese, happens. Did you see how the crowd’s voice
strengthened? Did you feel what the feminine principle is
(Mary) and how in Tomar (painted incessantly by Marko
Jakše, although he was never there) the hall
stirs, stirs centuries, and lifts freemasons
like some sort of dwarf. Dwarves
today just wrap ribs to pigeons.
And the pigeon (with the brush), another pigeon
(like Wurst, in salted and cloudy paper,
feasting), Bob Perelman is the pigeon.
He comes (twenty five years after
he drew his blood-tax in Arena), a quarter
of a century I guarded him like my own blind
beaver who will blast into the dark
corridors of America with the one
small tram-like shift. To us instead of us.
Arm Out and Point the Way
Vigorous, disfigured mice,
tassels or bonbons. Latte (the name
of the bitch with white fur), did the wheels
overeat like the heads of memory at the ends
of wood-limbs at Deacon? They were quite
devoured. Stretched out, softened,
given and given. Slime
washes windows. Peter as a rule
dances. Shoe shining is coming back,
the white matrix of the Announcing Angel.
People walking along roads
is coming back, the fluttering
of overcoats and the stopping of coaches.
The rushing to work and the paying
of tolls. We’re a bunch of flowers. Napoleons
of the Bible. Worms between butter
and jam at the vaults of Inter Conti.
Ceelia Min signs.
The foam curses and counts.
A bottle is missing.
Surely it’s hidden under the coverlet.
Pessoa Scolding Whitman
The whore of all solar systems and diligent
little ant, let’s begin with this restriction. Until here
cows, but here the guests can already wipe
their backs, except we dry this laundry
outdoors and the muffs also hang, although
it’s summer at Jama in Bohinj. Špela is already
a great-grandmother now, she has a certain grandson
who plays hockey at Tufts, already forgotten as well,
like those who played chess here:
Cvit, Raša, Avč, the awesome Montanists,
you can be mister God in your country
(Raša), but here in Oxford we wear coats
differently, also stutter a little, out of pathos,
so this then pours into our Carinthian blood,
and after my sister, who got married
to Detela, bore a genius (deceased), and one
good and important writer,
now the living and the dead pull each other’s hair
and with Barbara we’re civil servants, telephones
constantly bang against us, and she was a little
in love, and I too, and we sang
žure, put together for us by our mothers,
Madam Silva in her instance, and out
of this are born poets and civil servants,
who every free minute break for the Strand,
give search for Mikuž, another boy scout,
another nephew, another son, translating
that dreadful Latvian, I can find him
nowhere, and then Lojze arrives, the type
who would not believe I wished him well,
and yet today, first he gets lost in Harlem,
then still he comes up to Phillis,
who was wildly searching for him, and together
they watch Microcosmos, Phillis
howls with enthusiasm and they talk
fourteen hours without stopping, while
I, with Metka, rush to the same film:
how the snails fuck doesn’t move us, hardly
staying upright against catatonic fits
of sleep because I must save my energy
so I will wake up in the morning because then
I furiously type and sniff everything: Barbara,
if Govic rises, I will stare once more
at the muscles of the inflated Avčin
rowing, how should I be interested in
the little sex lives of insects
and robbers, and whether I truly
forgot a gift for her birthday.
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Translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry and the author from Gozd in kelih (The Forest and the Chalice).